The Serpent In Your Sleep
by yllektra
Summary: Damon Watches Elena Sleep


**Title:** The Serpent In Your Sleep  
**Fandom:** The Vampire Diaries  
**Rating:** PG  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own anything! :P  
**Characters/Pairings:** Damon-centric (pov), Damon/Elena  
**Spoilers/Warnings:** Based on the tv-show, no spoilers  
**Summary:**_And maybe one of these days you will wake up and find me still there, the feel of my touch still lingering on your skin, a blazing path from my heart to yours.  
And maybe one of these days you will wake up with my name on your lips, ripe and full, honey dripping from your lips._  
**Word Count:** 1875  
**Author's Notes:** I think there's more to Damon than just being the "bad guy" and I also think he could have chemistry even with a broomstick! *g*  
It's 1.30am and I'm sleepy but I just had to write it.

_~ English is not my native language, so excuse any crappiness and/or mistakes!_

**The Serpent In Your Sleep**

Like a thief, a serpent escaping the earth's bosom wiggling, I rise every night from my shallow grave, the one that's keeping my secrets safe.  
I don't have to open my eyes. I can find my own way to you.

I don't have to hear your voice. I don't have to see your face in the distance or closer. I have memorized its every curve, every angle. I know exactly where your lips part, a sigh escaping them when a dream floods your mind.  
Sometimes I wish that you dream of me.

_[Sometimes I wish -for all the centuries I have lived - that I had found some proof that life is preserved and not just as a dead, cold body reanimated, but as a consciousness that can float In the air and hover there above my head till it finds the perfect body to reconnect with me. Reconnect me with my Katherine.]_

It is your scent that brings me to you. The divine essence of your existence, a scent too complex and irresistible to describe or explain.  
But it needs no explaining.

I fly to you enthralled, as if in a trance, I am mesmerized by the pull you exert on me, but here I am in your room, night after night, speechless…

Your beauty steals the breath that is deep inside my chest, in my lungs, but unneeded; there it remains like a firefly trapped in two cruel hands, its light refusing to die out.

For centuries I saw no colors. Black and white was my world.

I did not distinguish shades of gray or shades in between.  
Only black and white and I followed black, its intensity and bluntness blinding, compelling.

It was easier to keep it simple. No feelings, no emotions, no morality, no remorse.

What I had done I could not take back; what I had lost, I could not revive.  
The tears I had shed had already dried when I found you.

A torn up page from a torn up book, discarded and yellow like a piece of a dream that went foul, my life dragged on like martyrdom.

But I was eager to transform it, unwilling to accept my defeat.

My cruel nature was like a dragon asleep in the deepest, darkest cave of my mind wreaking havoc when light wasn't there.

Waiting to slay the lady in distress coming its way. But when that lady came, the dragon was frozen in place, wishing it was the knight that would save her.

When did that happen?  
How did the lady, this meek, fragile thing, overpower the dragon, made it defy its nature, asking for self-destruction?

I had no use for goodness or mercy. I had no use for kindness, because life and un-life had shown me none.  
I was born to suffer and cause suffering, too.  
For decades I thought that was my only mission, my only destination.  
And it was easy, convenient in its simplicity, its directness.

So I took what came my way, I took and I grabbed with no consideration and no discretion. Not worrying about consequences, because really there were none.

Even if I slipped, even if my fangs sank into flesh that wasn't mine to claim - if any really is- even if they came after me with fire and pitchforks and guns, what would be the point?  
I was forever.

I'd outlive them and in 60-70 years no one would remember me. I would be one more guy in the crowd, hard to distinguish and set apart.  
I would be free to roam again.

I was forever.  
It was only when I saw you that I realized that I was forever … alone.

I had drifted apart from my brother. And it was probably my fault.

For centuries I had followed him like a shadow, a shadow that couldn't be seen because we were both moving in the dark, but I was there, unseen and unappreciated, like a heavy tombstone over his chest, although we would never, could never be buried and forgiven.

Not him, not me… not ever.

We were brothers him and I.  
We still are and even though there are centuries of things separating us, I could still feel a connection.  
I know he could feel it too.

I just didn't want to admit it, because admitting it would make it even more real.

I was a monster and I should remain one if I wanted to survive. What was what had sustained me for so long?

It wasn't memories, because everything that had happened in my mortal life, everything I had done, had brought me here.

It wasn't Stefan, because he had lost his faith and trust in me long after I had lost mine.

And then i realized it, I felt it even in my dead, unbeating heart.  
You were the reason, Elena.

If I had endured an eternity of loneliness, a heartache stretching to infinity, it was for you.

I have been holding out for you, and even though I couldn't be certain, I somehow knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that you were meant for me and I was meant for you.

It isn't just because you look like Katherine. You do, it is undeniable.

One only has to take one look at you, to discern all the ways you resemble each other.  
The color of your hair, the softness of your face, your olive skin.

The similarities... Everything that made Katherine, Katherine.

But I think what made me fall in love with you, was all the ways you were different.

And you are so different Elena. It's like you are two completely different people.

When she'd cry, you persevere, when she'd be scared you challenge, when she'd laugh you merely smirk but it's that seriousness, this sobriety that made me love you.  
Everything that makes you, YOU.

It feels like being given a second chance. I was never rainbows and butterflies, Elena.

It is not in my nature. Still, I could and would try it for you.

I'd stand under the rain for you, the rain drops soaking me till you were satisfied.

I'd hold your hand and hold the door for you.

I'd hold you in my arms till your body and my body became one.

Can't you feel how you change me? How you have changed me already?

I thought it was so obvious, that anyone could see it in my eyes, the glow, the love - haphazardly masked behind a veil of malice, one I had perfected over the centuries, because it was useful to be ruthless. It was instrumental to my survival.

You have to be ruthless.  
And if you can't be ruthless, then it is wise to appear so.

_"Anyone, anytime, any place"_

That's what I had told Stefan. I tried to instill whatever poison I had left into a single moment, my only chance to convince him that I was beyond saving, beyond redemption.

I didn't need his forgiveness. I fight for it every day, a word of compassion from my brother makes no difference.  
It doesn't tip the scale, because he is my brother. He is supposed to love me.

What I wanted was your forgiveness. Your forgiveness, your kindness, Elena, because you owe me nothing.  
You owe me nothing in this world or the next one, but I owe you everything.

I want to bow down to you and kneel at your feet. I want to place my head on your lap and let your fingers trace through my hair.

I want to feel your warm skin, sizzling against my icy one.

I want to hear your heartbeat reverberating through your bones, a vibration like a mother rocking her child to sleep. It's been centuries since I have last felt so sheltered.

I want to wrap my hands around my body and cringe; just shrink so much that I can fit in your arms and stay there forever, cocooned in your embrace like a little bird not knowing yet how to fly, its wings eager, but shy at its sides.

I want to tell you so many things, I want to touch you and make you mine in so many different ways, but I am too broken, too fragmented.  
Everything I say now won't make sense.

Instead, I cower behind easy words, words that don't reflect what I really mean or feel, but provide a facade of experience and distance.

A coolness, an indifference I don't feel, a detachment that hasn't made its way to my core yet.

I don't expect you to choose me over Stefan.

I can't expect you to choose me, I tell myself; but I don't listen and even though I want to rip this ridiculous hope out of my chest and rid myself of this weakness that is expectations, I find myself carving a heart on my soul, even though my real one is gone for good now.

Both are gone.

It's a makeshift heart. A fake one. An impossible case, a doubtful existence, but you made it beat again.

And it's with this heart, its every beat feeble and staggering, that I come to you every night.

Brushing your hair off your face, longing to see you and feel you near, breathe you in.

Serene, calm, oblivious as if time has stopped still, and nothing bad has happened.

I feel like we are in suspended animation, frozen in time, an invisible thread holding us together, a thread so frail that a mere word, a mere blink could sever it and I find myself still, petrified.

Horrified that this will all fall apart and reveal itself to be not just a fantasy, but a cruel joke fate is playing on me, feasting on the last bits of my humanity onto which I cling like the last life board after a wreckage.

I am afraid I will blink and miss it.  
I am afraid I will blink and when I open my eyes again I will find that you were never truly there.  
That you were just a figment of a cruel imagination, my own planning my demise.

But maybe I won't and maybe not tonight, maybe not ever.

Maybe when I open my eyes tonight, I will find your hands around me and your scent engulfing me, making my head swivel to the overwhelming sensations just whirling around me and four words: "I love you too" in my ears...

Or maybe one of these days you will wake up and find me still there, the feel of my touch still lingering on your skin, a blazing path from my heart to yours.

And maybe one of these days you will wake up with my name on your lips, ripe and full, honey dripping from your lips.

…And maybe one of these days you will wake up to find me there, in the darkest corner of the room you call yours, an unwanted intruder in your intimate space, shaking and sobbing, my cheeks blood-stained, my sharp teeth retracted, obsolete and my hands empty and cold- colder than they'd ever been- lingering across my hollow chest and maybe then you will realize that even monsters cry, even the serpents in your sleep.

~ Fin ~


End file.
